The king of stoner moviemakers, Kevin Smith, never really smoked much marijuana until Seth Rogen talked him into it last summer, he says. Now he sparks up at least three times a day and credits pot for helping him to dig his way out of a creative slump.

Not the sort of advice responsible parents, doctors or educators are likely to embrace, Smith told The Post’s Don Kaplan, “I know you’re supposed to tell kids not to do drugs, but, kids, do it! Do weed! Don’t do the other stuff, but weed is good . . . What you want to do is what I did, build a movie empire and, at age 38, smoke it all away.”

Smith is pushing his new book, “Shooting the S – – t With Kevin Smith,” a project he claims he didn’t even write because it’s a transcription of SModcast, his regular podcast with pal Scott Mosier. “I did so little work to put this book together, but I did everything to make the podcast happen, so by virtue of that I am the author,” he says.

Smith rode a wave of popularity in the early 1990s with movies like “Clerks” and “Chasing Amy.” He later stumbled with a string of bombs like “Jersey Girl,” and weed-centric “The Adventures of Bluntman and Chronic.” He then spent his down time agonizing over negative comments about his work on the Internet.

Now, thanks to a steady diet of marijuana, Smith says he’s moved on to greener pastures — writing a new “Batman” comic and directing films he didn’t write, including the upcoming cop buddy flick, “A Pair of Dicks,” with Bruce Willis and Tracy Morgan.

Smith says he’s “just not good” at directing his own stories anymore: “Judd Apatow is way better at being Kevin Smith now than Kevin Smith ever was. So Judd Apatow should do it for a while, and I should figure out something else, and weed has been [bleeping] helpful with that.”